Essays On Gender And Governance - United Nations Development ...

Locating Gender in the Governance Discourse
exceptions like the ANC in South Africa which adopted a selfadministered
quota of 30%, even if many of the women candidates
were clustered at the bottom 15% of the list. Other parties in that
country followed the ANC’s example, with the result that women
comprise 27% of the national legislature.
The second argument draws our attention to the fact that policy
outcomes are not necessarily superior (in feminist terms) in
countries where quotas have been implemented. The symbolic
representation of women, it is argued, is no guarantee of a
qualitatively better representation of women’s interests. The
evidence is clearly mixed, both across countries, as well as across
levels of government (local or national). Thus, for instance, a Nordic
woman politician laments that even where women account for 43%
of parliamentary representation, politics is still led and shaped by
men (IPU, 1999:71). The historical origins of the quota system also
seem to matter. Where quotas have been successful, as in
Scandinavia, two conditions have obtained. Quotas have been the
result of pressure from strong women’s sections within socialdemocratic
political parties, and social democracy itself has
attempted to change the public-private relationship through the
institution of the welfare state, justifying intervention in the market
on behalf of women (Razavi, 2000.:42). On the other hand, the
emphasis on formal equality in the erstwhile socialist states of
Eastern Europe ensured greater representation for women, but did
not succeed in policy terms, because it was largely symbolic. This
is not dissimilar from the experience of Uganda, where affirmative
action was imposed from above, rather than struggled for and
wrested from the state, making women MPs reluctant to voice
criticism or dissent of the government, to which they feel they owe
their loyalty (ibid:20).
With or without quotas, then, the role of political parties
appears to be critical to the issue of women’s representation.
Political parties (like the ANC or the social-democratic parties in
Scandinavia) may proactively seek to ensure higher representation
for women. Conversely, political parties may provide for symbolic
representation without substance. In Czechoslovakia (before the
split), the reasonable representation of women in the symbolic
structures of power – such as governmental elites – was actually
misleading, because they were seldom found in positions of real
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